


Five

by onceandfuturekiki



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 02:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6311539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceandfuturekiki/pseuds/onceandfuturekiki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events at the Raven's Queen Tomb, Keyleth and Kashaw have a chat that leads to certain confessions. It's a reimagining of their conversation toward the end of "The Sunken Tomb" that starts where they're talking about the amount of kisses between them. The whole fic is a conversation between these two, but it's 100% a Vaxleth fic. A rough version of this was originally posted on Tumblr, but this is a far more complete and polished version.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five

“It was actually my first kiss,” Keyleth said, feeling the blush bloom across her cheeks.

“Really?” Kashaw responded. “It was my second.”

She wasn’t expecting to hear that. The way he had grabbed her and kissed her so confidently, and then just walked off… Keyleth had been sure that he must have kissed  _many_ women in much the same way. It was oddly comforting that he hadn’t, that they were on more of an even level, but at the same time it kind of removed some of the sheen from the moment. Even as she was processing the new information, the shiny golden gleam that always seemed to appear around the edges of her memory whenever she brought the moment to mind was starting to fade into something more realistic and honest.

“So we have three kisses between us!” Kashaw continued.

Keyleth’s posture went rigid at hearing his count, as the situation became even more awkward for her than it had already been, remembering that the scales were balanced even more differently than either had initially thought. “Well,” she started, her hands wringing together. “It would be four now.”

“Oh, right,” he said, with a sort of unconcerned air, in a lighter way than she had expected. “You kissed Vax earlier today after the fight.”

With everything that had happened, she had kind of forgotten about that. About all of it. How worried she had been watching Vax in that ring, fighting Earthbreaker Groon. Of course she had been worried about Scanlan and Grog as well, but in a way that was sort of in the back of her mind, existing without really making its presence known. When she was watching the fight, it was like all she could see was Vax and everything that was happening to him. Every hit he took, every wince of pain felt like a punch in her gut, and every hit he landed, every move he was able to successfully make filled her with an admiration and a pride she that she couldn’t quite, in that moment, pinpoint the origin of. All she knew was the visceral feeling of connection she had experienced, so intense that she had barely even remembered that Kashaw had been there, standing next to her.

The relief had been so strong when the fight finally ended that she didn’t even think when she rushed over to Vax, her lips immediately going to his on pure instinct. The relief and _pride_ she felt that he had survived, that he was okay, had been overwhelming and the need to just be _close_ to him had driven her immediately into his arms.

After fighting a Beholder and watching one of her closest friends literally die and come back to life, after watching helplessly as Vax looked like his heart had just been ripped out and not being able to do a single thing to help, all of that had kind of faded into the background.

In short, no, that had not been the kiss she’d been thinking about.

“Right, yeah, I did do that, didn’t I?” she said finally, wincing. “Five, then.”

“Five?” Kashaw echoed, in a tone that was far more similar to what Keyleth had been expecting. His surprise was clearly evident, and it didn’t seem to be a happy surprise.

“Yep.”

“So… you kissed someone else between me kissing you and you kissing Vax today?”

“Well, he kissed me.”

“Okay.”

“Is it… are you mad?” Keyleth was at a complete loss. She had no idea how Kashaw would be feeling right now, or even how he  _should_  be feeling.  _Should_  he be mad? If he was, should  _she_  be mad at  _him_  for it? After all, he had just kissed her and walked away. It wasn’t like he had some kind of claim on her. But even then, she _did_ feel bad about this. She knew that, logically, she had done nothing wrong, especially since she hadn’t even been the one to initiate the kiss. But sitting here, telling Kashaw, who had just brought one of her closest friends back from the dead, that she had shared multiple kisses with someone else, had her feeling profoundly guilty. She probably shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.

Maybe he was just embarrassed, because now she was one kiss up on him. She’d heard before that guys could be like, that they had a certain pride about… _that sort of thing_.

“So, uh…” he started, his mouth twisting down strangely. “Who, um… who was it.”

That… wasn’t what she had expected him to do next. Grated, she really didn’t know  _what_ to expect because this entire thing was so beyond outside of her realm of experience. But she truly hadn’t expected him to want _details_.

Maybe he was asking because he was planning on punching whoever she told him had kissed her? She’d heard that men sometimes did that sort of thing, too.

Her mouth moved wordlessly, working as she, many times, started to say something, then stopped herself. Should she lie? Should she ask why he wanted to know? Should she change the subject?

Finally, making the decision to just be honest, because it would be the easiest thing to do, Keyleth took a long breath and released it, trying to calm herself, before finally saying, “Vax.”

As she said the name, her eyes went to her hands where they rested in her lap. For some reason, she really didn’t want to see his face as he processed that information. _Knowing_ she was hurting him was bad enough. She really didn’t want to _see_ it happening.

“Vax?” Kashaw asked slowly.

“Yeah.”

“What, uh… what lead up to this kiss? Was it just a spur of the moment thing, were you guys drunk or…?” His voice was strangely high, higher than she had ever heard it, like he was trying to act like he wasn’t all that interested in the information, like the answer wasn’t important to him.

“He had almost died. And he’d lost a lot blood,” Keyleth explained, remembering the incident in Anders’ study, how mad she had been at Vax, how taken off guard she had been at his words, how his lips had felt against hers, and how, for just the shortest of seconds, her eyes had slipped closed as she kissed him back. Even in her current awkward situation, she had to fight the smile that threatened to break out across her face when she thought about how sweet and groggy he had been, how he had complimented her ability to turn into the animals, and the pathetically told her that he had lost a lot of blood. In the moment she had been too flabbergasted to even think straight, but whenever she brought the moment to mind, it filled her with so much affection and happiness. “He’s sort of… in love with me.”

“Oh.”

Neither of them said anything else for a long time.

Keyleth continued wringing her hands together in her lap, teeth digging into her lower lip and her eyes screwed shut. She knew what his next question was going to be. Why hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut? Why couldn’t she just keep this conversation to what she had intended it to be? She had been worried about hurting him  _before_  he had brought her friend back from the dead. If he wanted to be with her, how could she turn him down and break his heart? How could she tell him that-

“You love him, too?” Kashaw finally asked, no longer trying to seem like he didn’t care.

She took a moment, tightening her lids against her eyes, trying to will the tears that had sprung up away. Finally, when she was sure that opening her eyes wouldn’t result in tears spilling out of them, she looked over at Kashaw.

The look on his face that met her gaze had not been what she was expecting. She had been expecting anger, or sadness, or heartbreak. She’d imagined that he might look enraged, or like he felt betrayed. But his face was mostly blank, except for the open curiosity in his eyes.

Knowing that she couldn’t lie to him, that letting him think that this entire, fucked up situation wasn’t exactly what it was would be far crueler in the long run than being honest now, she decided to tell him the truth, without beating around the bush or trying to cushion the blow.

She nodded, unable to say the words. Even answering with a “yes” felt like she’d be saying it out loud to someone else, and she wanted Vax to be the first person she said it to, the first person she ever said those words to. Sitting here, she realized that those words, that sentiment, from her, in any form, belonged to Vax, and no one else.

“I’m sorry,” Keyleth said, barely louder than a whisper. “I feel… terrible about this whole thing. I knew you might still be interested and I didn’t want to hurt you, and now you’ve brought one of my best friends, my  _sister_ , back from the dead and I’m… _rejecting_ you. I feel like a piece of shit.”

Grasping her hands together, she braced herself for his reaction.

He started laughing.

She looked up at him, her jaw dropping.

Nothing he had done in this entire conversation, in the entire time that they had known each other, had been what she was expecting, but this was beyond the pale.

Keyleth wasn’t even sure that she had ever heard him laugh before.

Noticing the look on her face, Kashaw rushed to reassure her, still laughing. “No, I’m not laughing at you, I’m just…” he chuckled a few more times, trying to compose himself. “This whole situation is pretty fucked up, isn’t it?”

Realizing that his laughter hadn’t been mocking or cruel, Keyleth calmed down, smiling a bit. “It really is.”

“I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t interested,” he said before taking a long breath and letting it out. “And I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not disappointed. But I think a big part of me knew that it would never work, even before I knew about you and Vax.”

Nodding, she reminded the both of them, “You’re married.”

“To a _really_ unfriendly god. To like… death herself. Kind of,” Kashaw finished for her. “It’s not like you and I could run away and be together or anything like that.”

“I would ever run away, anyway,” she said, her eyes drifting over to the rest of their party.

“Yeah. I know,” he replied. “And I feel like I kind of knew about Vax, too. I mean, I’m not people-smart enough to have  _really_  known at any point, but when you said what you did I wasn’t really surprised. Like some subconscious part of my brain noticed it a long time ago and didn’t tell me.”

“A long time ago?”

“Please, the way you two were practically flailing with awkwardness when you were talking about pretending to be married?”

Keyleth chuckled, remembering how the air had left her lungs when Vax had asked her if she wanted to be his wife. She had known that he was asking her if she wanted to  _pretend_ to be the wife of the person he was  _pretending_  to be, but hearing those words come from him had affected her in a way she couldn’t explain. She remembered thinking that it had felt far more real than it should have. And she remembered the look in his eyes when he had asked her that, when she had said yes…

Shit. How many moments like that had she missed, had she just been completely oblivious to? How many moments could she have looked and, had she been a bit smarter, a bit more aware, just known? How much time had they wasted?

“Like I said,” Kashaw continued, unaware of her inner dialogue, “he does stare at you a lot. But I can’t say I blame him.” He was smiling warmly at her, and Keyleth felt a weight leave her shoulders, letting out a breath in relief.

She smiled back at him, trying to express all the gratitude she felt in that moment without words.

“And I uh… I don’t want you to feel any obligation to me for what I did. I mean, I know I told you that I did it because I knew you wanted me too, but I would do that for anyone I really cared about, no matter  _how_  I cared about them. Like, even if they were just friends. I mean, I would do it for Zahra. I probably would have, if you weren’t here or I didn’t think about you or something. I know that Vex means a lot to her and…” He trailed off, chuckling again. “I’m rambling.”

“Yeah,” Keyleth said, letting out her own chuckle, relieved that they had been able to so easily return to their _normal_ level of awkward, rather than the painful, angst-filled awkward they had been experiencing minutes before.

“I’m just trying to say… you’re on a list, a very short list, of people that I  _care_  about. Not just people that I have… romantic feelings toward. You’re annoying, and you’re infuriatingly  _nice_ , but you’re kind and you’re good and you’re my friend no matter what other feelings might have been mixed in there. When I said that I did it because I knew you wanted me to I didn’t mean that I thought you would owe me or that I was trying to win your heart or anything. It had nothing to do with any of that. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He nodded, and a feeling of finality settled over Keyleth as she smiled at him. They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching their friends move about the campsite. Her eyes settled on Vax and Vex, huddled together, Vex’s mouth moving as she spoke to her brother. Keyleth couldn’t see Vax’s face, and her heart filled with worry again. A part of her felt like she should be over there, holding his hand and comforting him. But she wasn’t sure how to do that. She wasn’t sure how to offer comfort for  _this_. And she wasn’t sure if she even  _should_. Would he even want her around right now? Wouldn’t he want to just be with his sister? She would probably be intruding if she tried to go to him. But that didn’t mean that the worry wasn’t gnawing at her stomach, and her heart ached as she looked at Vax’s back, remember how he had looked holding Vex’s lifeless body.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, not meaning to say the words out loud.

Kashaw looked over at her, then followed her eyes to the twins, his face taking on an expression of understanding. “I wish I could tell you what to do, but dealing with other people isn’t exactly my area of expertise. Knowing what people want even in a normal situation is tough for me. In a situation like this… I’m pretty fucking useless.”

“I’m feeling pretty useless right now, too,” she said, unable to look away from Vax.

Keyleth knew that Kashaw couldn’t offer her any help right now, that he couldn’t offer her anything more than the awkward squeeze he gave her hand in comfort. She looked over at him and tried to smile, only managing the slightest lifting at the corners of her mouth. He gave her a look that mirrored her own, before patting her hand and saying, “I’m going to go see if Zahra is okay. Like I said, Vex means a lot to her…”

“Of course. Go. I’m fine.”

“Okay, well, um…” Kashaw was quiet for a moment, trying to think of something to say in parting, before he simply stood up and walked away. Keyleth laughed at that, happy that things had gone so well, and that some things hadn’t changed.

Her eyes went back to the twins, where Vex was still talking quietly to Vax. Keyleth wished she could see Vax’s face, that she could see if he was saying anything in response. She wished she was over there right now, holding his hand, telling him that everything would be okay. Her fingers jumped with the need to touch him, to feel his skin and know that he was there, that he was okay. She wished she could hold him, that she could go to him and let him know that everything would be okay.

She wished she knew if he wanted her there at all.

THE END


End file.
